Cardio
It snowed all day. All day and most of last night, and apparently it's set to do it again tonight. When that happens, you have to really stay on top of the snow removal or else you get stranded (particularly when you drive a Toyota Yaris that has, like, 5 inches of ground clearance).
So I was out shoveling out the driveway (or, really, mostly sweeping it, as it is very, very dry snow) and a neighbor came up riding an ATV with a snowplow attachment and offered to plow our driveway out for us. I respectfully and gratefully declined--it was nice of her to offer.
But this is one of the things that I think is so intensely stupid about modern American life. It's a driveway and a front stoop; it took about 10 or 15 minutes of sweeping to get it totally cleared out (granted that has a lot to do with it being such powdery snow). Meanwhile, for those 10 or 15 minutes, I created no pollution, I spent no money, and I got some exercise. I also got to have fun with my son, who loves helping sweep and shovel, and the dogs who enjoyed wading through the virgin meter or so of snow accumulated in the front yard. Why would I want a machine to do that for me? What would I really gain from it? I'd get less exercise, pump out noise and air pollution, and free up 10 minutes maybe ...to do what, exactly?
There is a pattern in which Americans will pay for something to make their life more convenient by doing some bit of trivial work for them, then pay to go to a gym or pay for exercise equipment (which, likely, they don't use enough) and go do that separate from their chores, then in the overall scheme of things, it's saving them nothing. Maybe they get a little extra time, which most studies suggest they spend sitting unproductively on their asses watching reality shows. Feh.
I think about the garden the same way. True, it's a lot of work, although it could be done in easier ways than I did last year, and the canning and freezing take time and effort and forethought. On the other hand, it's work that, again, creates relatively little (canning and freezing create some, but far less than the alternatives would) pollution, gives us exercise and vitamin D from all the being out in the sun. The alternative is to not garden, work more hours for money that I can then exchange for food--food that creates an unknown quantity of pollution and does not require me to exercise. Most importantly to me, the time spent gardening is time spent with my family, as we garden together, while time spent working more hours to make more money is time spent away from my family. It's also time spent caring for living things and getting back in touch with nature and the season cycle. My most high-tech piece of gym equipment is a wheelbarrow, and my son is getting quite an education while we're out there, too. It's all win-win.
Our bodies need to do hard work, and so do our minds. The human body and brain were not meant to spend most of the day sitting, let alone sitting reading gossip web sites and watching TV. Until T and I are much too old and infirm to handle a snow shovel and a rake, I expect we'll carry on like this. You wanna feel our biceps?
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Comments
I don't know. I get the feeling that would interfere with my gardening, man.
Come to think of it, it doesn't seem to have interfered too badly with Bush's ranching and mountain biking.
It can be pretty difficult to convince people that more work is a good thing, though. Maybe it would play better down your way. But now y'all have Midnight Oil running your country, so you don't need me.
Anyway, I can't run for president--I don't have any money.
Where I live now there's more leaf-blowers per capita than anywhere. They are noisy, pollution-producing scourges of the earth. Why oh why can't these be banned, forcing people to use a broom instead?
I hate leaf blowers, too.
A good number of people who use this kind of equipment are not gym rats, you're right, although I've known some crazies who are and do it apparently because they think the program they do with weights and equipment at the gym gives them a "better" workout or more muscle definition or something. Weirdos.
Whether they're gym rats or not, point remains: humans need exercise. Might as well get it shoveling snow. Or raking leaves. Or whatever.
It just occurred to me that I had an argument via the letters to the editor section of the student newspaper of my university about this. She had contended that the university needed to build a new student activity center with better workout equipment and therefore students needed to pay a whatever-dollar per semester fee hike to support it. I was all, "It's true that humans need exercise. It is not at all true that they need an activity center to get it. What this is going to do is waste the money of (probably the majority of) students who will never use it and prefer to get exercise through hiking, physical labor, etc." The university also already had a gym with various equipment, of course.
This was in Missoula, Montana, surrounded by some of the most beautiful mountains for hiking on earth (and most students did indeed have access to them)--what kind of person would rather walk on a treadmill in a gym than hike in them? My mind boggles.